Exercise: Exploring Options and Alternatives

⏱ 5-10 minute exercise

Let’s practice exploring Options and Alternatives!

Go to the MISMO worksheet you downloaded. Reflecting on your learners’ SHOES, fill in the Options and Alternatives sheet by first thinking of any and all extreme cases that might occur to your learners. Then, think of the options and alternatives that will help or enable your learners to access the learning experience you designed.

• What kinds of situations, conditions, or barriers exist for your learners?
• What options or alternatives could you offer to help your learners to engage with the learning experience you are designing?

Depending on the learners you are designing for, options and alternatives can simply be providing a downloadable or printable option for your learning materials. For more extreme cases, it may call for more complex solutions. Either way, being deliberately empathic only leads us to improve our practice of designing effective and meaningful learning experiences.

Our goal with exploring options and alternatives is to ensure that no student gets left behind, and that every learner has as much opportunity and access to learning as possible.